Mike and Rob Barnes started selling airsoft equipment out of their dad’s basement when they were teenagers. It was part of a homeschool project and evolved into a profitable business.
A few years later, they launched a pickleball equipment company at ages 19 and 22. They had no college degrees, no outside investors, and no guarantee that pickleball would ever take off.
“I remember there was a point where dad talked to us and said, ‘OK, you can go to college, and you can go down that path, or you can keep doing what you’re doing and just double down,'” Rob told Business Insider. “And we were like, let’s double down, see what happens.”
More than a decade later, that bet has paid off. Selkirk is now one of the leading pickleball equipment brands, known for its premium paddles, and the family-run company expects to generate nine-figure revenue in 2026.
The Barnes brothers say that while they skipped traditional higher education, learning has always been central to how they run their business. They’ve learned from other successful founders and executives by reading a lot of business books.
They shared six of their top recs.
Both brothers say they gravitate toward biographies and autobiographies because they show how decisions actually play out in the real world.
“I’ve personally gotten a lot more out of biographies than I ever have from particular business books,” Rob said. “You have people literally talking about how they made a decision and why, and then showing how it played out, good or bad.”
Some of their favorite autobiographies and memoirs include:
- “Shoe Dog,” by Nike founder Phil Knight
- “Made From Scratch,” by Texas Roadhouse founder Kent Taylor
- “The Ride of a Lifetime,” by former Disney CEO Bob Iger
One business book the brothers said influenced them early on was “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber, which dispels myths about starting a business.
They also recommend “Barbarians at the Gate,” which tells the story of RJR Nabisco’s fall.
“It was interesting — more of a warning about how corporate governance can get out of hand,” they said of Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s bestseller.
Finally, one of Mike’s favorites is “The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success.”
The book profiles eight relatively unknown CEOs who delivered extraordinary results by ignoring convention.
“They weren’t very big on public perception,” Mike said. “But they ran their companies really well in unconventional ways. And it worked.”
The brothers are very willing to question conventional wisdom.
They don’t believe there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to go about business, and said they try to avoid a “best practices” mindset.
“In a formal education environment, you often learn there’s one way of doing things — and your goal is to avoid making a mistake,” said Mike. “That creates a mindset where people are just trying to learn the best practice so they don’t mess up. Our mindset is more like, let’s look at all the different ways people have done things and decide what actually makes sense for us.”
Instead of defaulting to industry norms, they focus on “strategic practices” that are grounded in evidence, context, and their specific business goals.
“‘Best practice’ is almost a bad word in our company,” Mike said. “If someone says, ‘Let’s do this because it’s the best practice,’ you actually have to bring in evidence and explain why it’s ‘best.'”
Rob added, “No one’s built a great business by doing everything exactly the same way everyone else does. Be willing to be counterintuitive and challenge the status quo.”
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